Interview with the historian compañero Aldo Díaz Lacayo with Alberto Mora
En Vivo Magazine, Channel 4
February 21, 2019
Aldo Díaz Lacayo
Every external aggression against Latin America by the United States, always foregrounds the position of General Sandino. General Sandino always thought that Latin America can only fully defend itself if it is united against US aggression. In other words, what is currently happening with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua corresponds exactly with General Sandino's defensive, nationalist and anti-imperialist imperative.
Sandino is always forcefully relevant, no matter whether there is or is not visible aggression, because North American aggression is always present, it is present always at every moment. Sandino said it clearly: I can continue the struggle for one, two, three, four years, but finally I am going to lose; without the support of Latin America, if we don't all unite. When he spoke of losing, he was referring to the armed phase, but he himself replied that he would fight until the end.
Who fully takes up Sandino's thought at this visible moment of aggression? I believe that Daniel Ortega is a leader in that respect, an indispensable leader in the face of this visible situation of US aggression against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Non one can say this situation can be confronted without General Sandino's thought. We Nicaraguans know this, and we have no doubt, and we know that Daniel's attitude is the right one: To continue General Sandino's thinking now.
Sandino's problem, or the problem with Sandino, is that other countries do not know him... They don't know him! They know perfectly well and totally recognize Sandino's heroic attitude of confronting the Empire militarily, but they do not know his thought, they do not relate the foundations of Sandino's ideology with the current situation, that's why they mention other historical leaders who are also valid, but within that validity the most current is General Sandino.
One cannot ignore Bolívar, it would be impossible; one cannot ignore Martí, it would be impossible, but it is also impossible to ignore General Sandino. I have always said, and I repeat, that General Sandino is the great recognized-unknown of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The relationship that the United States makes between Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba is a fraudulent one, because modern Cuba was born and developed in an international conjuncture of global confrontation between two powers and two ideologies. We, too, were born at that moment, but from the very beginning affirmed that we seek a different revolutionary orientation, and we expressed it concretely: political pluralism, recognizing the existence of other parties; international non-alignment, which recognizes countries’ individuality in the context of the historical situation; a mixed economy, which does not occur in any socialist system; and by socialist I refer to the orientation of real socialism.
The same can be said of Venezuela, and in Venezuela’s case it must be stressed, that the revolutionary orientation is Bolivar's thought. It is no other thought. The only Latin American leader who did not copy the US Constitution was Bolívar. He made a Constitution of his own, and fought for those principles.
On the other hand, to put it more clearly, Venezuela and we in Nicaragua seek to implement social revolution with our own Principles, the problem is that our Principles contradict the will for domination of Latin America that the United States has always had since the Monroe Doctrine.
In this current situation, I am referring to the thought of Bolívar and the thought of Sandino, the Bolivarian Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution are influencing... it is the opposite of what the United States says; they are influencing the new revolutionary political direction taken by Cuba. I am not saying that Cuba is going to change its system, but that Venezuela and Nicaragua are influencing the new revolutionary and socialist orientation that Cuba is currently giving to the Cuban People.
If one reads the draft Constitution, the new Cuban Constitution, one realizes that there are principles that correspond to the mixed economy... it corresponds! That is enough to demonstrate and to accept that our two Revolutions affect Cuba’s new revolutionary socialist thought.
Journalist Juan Cortez
Comrade, to finish, what is at stake?
Aldo Díaz Lacayo
What's at stake? Absolute independence of States, respect for international law, no aggression or threat of aggression by one country against another. At stake is the identity of each State in Latin America and the Caribbean; the Legal Principle of Equality of each State; the general Independence of Latin America from the North American Empire. It is the same situation as in 1810, that is what’s at stake! That's why we have to defend ourselves, just as we have always defended ourselves.